Research by stellaOpen source environmental science research at Public Labhttps://i.publiclab.org/feed/stella.rss
PLANNING TO HOST AN EVENT?stellaWed, 25 Apr 2018 15:28:19 +0000https://i.publiclab.org/notes/stella/04-25-2018/planning-to-host-an-event
<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>
<p>Event planning can turn even the most capable person into a ball of nerves. After a couple sleepless nights and countless emails requesting for funds, we finally managed to pull through in Organizing Rails Girls Nairobi Event.</p>
<p>It would be selfish of me not to share some of the tips and practices that that we used and also learnt in the event planning.</p>
<p><strong>
checklist</strong>
The basic needs are:
- Make a budget
- Venue and Date
- Food and Drinks
- Internet
- Speakers
- Marketing - How you are going to reach the target audience</p>
<p>We depended on supporters and sponsors for all the funding. Here is the full details of the the whole planning process:</p>
<h2>Logistics/Planning:</h2>
<p><strong>Eight weeks out</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Selected date and location of our event, in a way that it didn’t conflict with other community events and holidays.</li>
<li>Identified the expected number of participants.</li>
<li>Identified appropriate venue and room for the event.</li>
<li>Looked for coaches.</li>
<li>Looked for appropriate funding organizations and send emails requesting for funds.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Seven weeks out</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Created invitation link and made it available for application to interested participants.</li>
<li>Conducted walk through inspection of the venue.</li>
<li>Looked for coaches dinner hotel.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Four weeks out</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Ordered and designed appropriate marketing materials for our event that included T-shirts, Stickers and posters</li>
<li>Distributed the posters to the venue for marketing purposes</li>
<li>Decided on Menu and made arrangement for refreshments to be served.</li>
<li>Identified the appropriate topics to be discussed on the event day.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Three weeks ahead</strong>
- Sent invitation email to all applicants
- Sent a remind email to funding organizations.
- Confirmed reservations and arrangements for the venue and catering.
- Confirmed our coaches and made hotel and transport arrangements.</p>
<p><strong>Two weeks ahead</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Made follow up calls to invitation by reminding coaches to invite friends.</li>
<li>Confirmed directions to the event location</li>
<li>Confirmed directions, location and made reservations for the coaches’ dinner.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>One week ahead</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Send a reminder email to all applicants indicating the venue, location and event schedule.</li>
<li>Made last offer to invite friends.</li>
<li>Confirmed the speakers are will be attending and sent schedules for various talks to the speakers.</li>
<li>Confirmed coaches dinner hotel and menu</li>
<li>Organised for the delivery of marketing materials i.e T-shirts and stickers</li>
</ul>
<h2>The event</h2>
<p><strong>Day1: 16th February
</strong>
- Did installations: Installing Ruby on Rails on the attendees computers with help from the coaches and organizers.
- Interaction session: Knowing each other and snacking.
- Had coaches dinner: Coaches interacted during dinner, planned about the next day’s events and what was expected of them.</p>
<p><strong>Day 2: 17th February</strong></p>
<p>Activities done on the second say include:
- Early bird swag: The attendees were greeted with the event’s t-shirt and sponsors marketing materials to the participants as they came in.
- Attendees registration.
- Checked in coaches to make sure each one of them is up to speed with the day’s activities.
- Introduction to Ruby on Rails
- Word from sponsors.
- Lightning talks.
- Warm-up games.
- Tea and Lunch.
- Workshops: Attendees divided into groups of three and each group assigned to a coach to guide on building first simple application in Ruby on Rails
- Tech stories.
- Contemplating on thing learned and solving challenges in groups
- Cake cutting.</p>
<p>Here is a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f_zb_Ejntmz8OUQq00TaQ4hRscBAC4tC4afFutw66hs/edit#gid=1080778559">link</a> to the detailed schedule for the event</p>
<h2>After the Event.</h2>
<ul>
<li>Cleared all debts from the event.</li>
<li>Sent a thank you note to the attendees and coaches along with a feedback form on the event for thoughts on the event.</li>
<li>Made follow up calls to participants inviting them to our bi-weekly Rails Girls meetups.</li>
<li>Began planning for the bi-weekly weekend meetups.</li>
<li>Added all the attendees to our slack channel for communication and to keep the community alive.</li>
</ul>
<h2>THAT WAS IT GUYS. FEEL FREE TO REACH ME IN CASE OF ANY INQUIRES</h2>
https://publiclab.org/notes/show/16210RAILS GIRLS NAIROBI MEGA CODING EVENTstellaThu, 15 Mar 2018 14:10:27 +0000https://i.publiclab.org/notes/stella/03-15-2018/rails-girls-nairobi-mega-coding-event
<p><strong>Organized by </strong>: Rails Girls Nairobi
<strong> Rails Girls Community</strong></p>
<h2>RAILS GIRLS NAIROBI MEGA CODING EVENT</h2>
<pre><code> February 16th - 1400hrs to 1700hrs
February 17th - 0800hrs to 1700hrs
</code></pre>
<p>Faceook Event URL :<a href="https://www.facebook.com/Rails-Girls-Nairobi-1988068271462472/"> Event Link</a>
Photos URL : <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipObrGbyALHSJnfegc0ZNXo59r5CyoPW3j5oWFhcL6UbbeywzDFfTUeSJZzZQ6GjAQ?key=b0ZTTGw1R0hSZTJ1UFVNQ19uSFZoakJJRy12R21R">Rails Girls Nairobi</a>
Twitter hashtag :<strong> <a href="/tag/RailsGirlsNairobi">#RailsGirlsNairobi</a></strong> <strong>#MegaCoding</strong></p>
<h2><strong>Organizers Name &amp; Email</strong></h2>
<ul>
<li>StellaMaris Njage - <a href="mailto:stellamarisnjage@gmail.com">stellamarisnjage@gmail.com</a></li>
<li>Ceciliah Wairimu - <a href="mailto:cessmbuguar@gmail.com">cessmbuguar@gmail.com</a></li>
<li>Racheal Kiteme - <a href="mailto:rachaelrirrie@gmail.com">rachaelrirrie@gmail.com</a></li>
<li>Stella Ireri - <a href="mailto:stellaireri@gmail.com">stellaireri@gmail.com</a></li>
<li>Joanna Nanjekye- <a href="mailto:nanjekyejoannah@gmail.com">nanjekyejoannah@gmail.com</a></li>
<li>Mercy Cheruto - <a href="mailto:m.thirty100@gmail.com">m.thirty100@gmail.com</a></li>
<li>Rahma Halene- <a href="mailto:rahmahalane@gmail.com">rahmahalane@gmail.com</a></li>
<li><a href="mailto:Catheryne-kathiekim95@gmail.com">Catheryne-kathiekim95@gmail.com</a></li>
<li>Cynthia Anyango - <a href="mailto:acynthiaanyango@gmail.com">acynthiaanyango@gmail.com</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><strong>Our Sponsors:</strong></h2>
<ul>
<li>Microverse</li>
<li>Gitlab</li>
<li>Riara University</li>
<li>Google</li>
<li>Software Lab Ventures, LLC</li>
<li>Gold Avenue Music, LLC</li>
</ul>
<h2><strong>Metrics</strong></h2>
<p>How many registered to attend : 100
How many turned up in total : 61
Male Attendees : 20
Female Attendees : 41</p>
<h2><strong>Summary:</strong></h2>
<p>The aim of the event was to introduce Ruby on rails to attendees and help them realize the importance of tech communities in career development. Our target audience was students from the age of 16. We also wanted to bring coaches who have experience on these technologies to come and speak to the attendees and also have a hands-on sessions with them as they start their journey on Ruby on Rails and software development in general.
We managed to bring together 16 awesome coaches who use Ruby daily in building softwares and had a total of 39 beginners who wrote their first code in Ruby on Rails during our event.</p>
<h2><strong>Overall Objective:</strong></h2>
<p>We the Rails Girls Nairobi organizers, thought of organizing our first major event after completing the training of the1st cohort of the Rails Girls program which had about 6 ladies committed to the program.
We needed continuity and growth to the tech community in terms of outreach and knowledge transfer to those interested in venturing into the world of programming, using Ruby as the programming language to get them started. Our major target was college students due to their flexibility in attending the scheduled meetups.
The aim of the event was to introduce Ruby on Rails to attendees and help them realize the importance of tech communities in career development. The students were also introduced to open source world and be guided on how to contribute to open source projects. We had Alumna of great student opportunities such as Google Summer of Code, Outreachy, Rails Girls Summer of Code and Anita Borg also gave tips on how to get into such opportunities.</p>
<h2><strong>Success Highlights:</strong></h2>
<p><strong>Attendee Feedback:</strong>
After the event we sent out a feedback form to the attendees and coaches. Summary of the feedback was:
- The event was amazing and informative
- Direct involvement from the coaches helped them understand and grasp the content better.
- Lightning talks such as opportunities in tech, real life tech stories, good programmer practices, version controlling were very inspiring and made them be inspired to keep continue building softwares.
- The warm-up games were awesome and helped people to bond and clear their minds.
They would love such events to be organized outside Nairobi.</p>
https://publiclab.org/notes/show/15962SoC proposal:RGSOC PROPOSAL: Upgrade to Rails 5.1.5 stellaWed, 14 Mar 2018 06:57:24 +0000https://i.publiclab.org/notes/stella/03-14-2018/soc-proposal-rgsoc-proposal-upgrade-to-rails-5-1-5
<h6><strong>RGSOC PROPOSAL: Upgrade to Rails 5.1.5</strong></h6>
<p><a href="https://publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/023/735/original/log.png"><img src="https://publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/023/735/large/log.png" alt="log.png" /></a></p>
<h2><strong>About us</strong></h2>
<p>We are team Akaringular composed of two awesome members:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Rachael Kiteme
<strong>LinkedIn: </strong><a href="null">https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachael-kiteme-959a23119/</a>
<strong>GitHub: </strong><a href="https://github.com/rachaelkiteme">https://github.com/rachaelkiteme</a>
<strong>Email:</strong><a href="mailto:rachaelrirrie@gmail.com">rachaelrirrie@gmail.com</a>
<strong>Twitter:</strong> <a href="/profile/rirrieray">@rirrieray</a></p></li>
<li><p>StellaMaris Njage
<strong>LinkedIn:</strong> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/stellamaris-njage-0528b1103">www.linkedin.com/in/stellamaris-njage-0528b1103</a>
<strong>GitHub:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/StlMaris123">https://github.com/StlMaris123</a>
<strong>Email:</strong> <a href="mailto:stellamarisnjage@gmail.com">stellamarisnjage@gmail.com</a>
<strong>Twitter:</strong> <a href="/profile/StlMaris">@StlMaris</a>
<strong>Location: </strong>
Nairobi, Kenya</p></li>
</ol>
<h2><strong>Project description</strong></h2>
<p>Upgrade to Rails 5.1.5</p>
<p>The latest Rails Upgrade has come with awesome features such as:
<strong>a)Action Cable</strong>
Is a framework for handling WebSockets in Rails. It’s a completely integrated solution for managing connections, a channels layer for server-side processing, and a JavaScript layer for client-side interaction. It’s incredibly easy to use, and makes designing live features like chat, notifications, and presence so much easier.
The most interesting thing about Action Cable is that you get access to entire Active Record and PORO domain model in your WebSockets work. It comes with brand-new ActionController::Renderer system that makes it trivial to render templates outside of controllers, when one want to reuse server-side templates for WebSocket responses.
default development server is switched from Webrick to Puma to enable Action Cable to run in process with the rest of the app.
<strong>b)API mode</strong>
Rails is not only a great choice when it comes to building a full-stack application that uses server-side rendering of HTML templates, but also a great companion for the new crop of client-side JavaScript or native applications that just needs the backend to speak JSON. The new API mode makes this clearer such that when one creates a new Rails application using rails new backend --api, gets a slimmed down skeleton and configuration that assumes that one will be working with JSON, not HTML.
By default, API mode relies on <a href="/tag/to_json">#to_json</a> calls on model classes. But one can either use Jbuilder, Active Model Serializers, or look at the new JSONAPI::Resources project for a more advanced solution.
API mode and Action Cable are the two star features of Rails 5.1.5.
others
<strong>-test runner reports failures inline.</strong>
<strong>-New Attributes API</strong>
<strong>-ApplicationRecord </strong>has is born as a default parent class of all models created by the generators.
<strong>-ActiveRecord::Relation </strong>in_batches makes it much easier to deal with record work in batches at a time to lessen memory overloads.</p>
<h2><strong>Abstract/summary</strong></h2>
<p>The project still runs on Rails 4.2</p>
<h2><strong>Problem</strong></h2>
<p>The projects runs on a Rails Version that is not up to date</p>
<h2><strong>Set Up</strong></h2>
<p>We have already forked the code base and installed it on our machines. We have also started making contributions in order to familiarize ourselves with the project.</p>
<h2><strong>Timeline/milestones</strong></h2>
<p><strong>March- June: </strong>
Get to know our mentors and understand the project better
Be active participants of all channels of communication used in the project
Contribute to the project by solving bugs, Creating features,refactoring, creating issues (especially beginner friendly) to be solved, documentation and any other task required from us by the coaches.
<strong>July 1 - 14</strong>
- Update controllers and their tests
- Default rendering on the controllers
- Refactor methods and classes in the controllers</p>
<p><strong>July 15 - 28</strong>
- Update models and mailers and tests
- Refactor the methods
<strong>July 29th - August 4th</strong>
- Update all the configurations and ensure that the gems are compatible with all the library versions.
- Test and refactor
<strong>August 5th - 18th</strong>
- Update mailers, views and services.
- Update tests and refactor the code
<strong>August 19th - 31st</strong>
- Update Documentation
- Code reviews
<strong>September 1 -14th</strong>
- Routing
- Etags
- Tests and code refactoring
<strong>September 15th - 28th</strong>
- Action pack: Helpers
- Active Support
- Tests and refactoring code</p>
<p><strong>September 29th - </strong>
- Continue working on issues
- Clean up Code
- Documentation</p>
<h2><strong>Team work</strong></h2>
<p>We were course mates in college and good friends. During the four year course we could do group discussions and work together in our assignments. Rails Girls Nairobi brought us together once more and we have since learnt to work together and improve each other. We both live in the same City and therefore meeting and working together is very convenient for us</p>
<h2><strong>References</strong></h2>
<p><a href="http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html">http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html</a>
we will follow the following basic steps:
- Write tests and make sure they pass.
- Move to the latest patch version after your current version.
- Fix tests and deprecated features.
- Move to the latest patch version of the next minor version.</p>
<h2><strong>Audience</strong></h2>
<p>This project will most helpful to the developers. With the new upgrade, It will be easier to refactor, remove deprecation warnings and most importantly sail a long and enjoy coding with the new code bases of Rails 5.</p>
<h2><strong>Passion</strong></h2>
<p>First, It is the motivation behind the project. Doing investigations on the Environment which is a very important factor for both living and non-living things to co-exist.
Secondly, It is due to the community at Public Lab. They are very welcoming and easy to work with.</p>
<h2><strong>Commitment</strong></h2>
<p>We are both ready and available to give our all during the 3 months period and also after the internship. We do understand and acknowledge that this is a serious commitment and we are ready to commit our time resource for the success of the internship. We do appreciate the benefits that come along with this internship and we would not like to waste such an opportunity.</p>
https://publiclab.org/notes/show/15948GSOC 2017 FINAL REPORT; EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS OVERHAULstellaThu, 24 Aug 2017 18:53:04 +0000https://i.publiclab.org/notes/stella/08-24-2017/gsoc-2017-final-report
<h2>EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS</h2>
<p>The main aim of the project was to manage too many notifications for subsequent edits and new taggings on nodes. <a href="https://publiclab.org/notes/stella/04-03-2017/email-notification-overhaul">This</a> is the original proposal to the project</p>
<h3>Work Done</h3>
<p><strong>- Email notifications without scheduling</strong></p>
<p>This involved sending emails t tag subscribers on new tagging, found <a href="https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/396">here</a>. The issues were broken into the following subsections:</p>
<ul>
<li>Check whether a user has gotten any notification regarding new node creation or any of its tagging.</li>
<li>Check the tags on a node.</li>
<li>Get the list of users following the new tag.</li>
<li>Check that for each of the users following the new tag, none is following the existing tags.</li>
<li>Tests for the above conditions.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Tag addition Notification</strong></p>
<p> This used the above conditions to send notifications. It was done in the following steps:</p>
<ul>
<li>Create a mailer template with the notification information.</li>
<li>Trigger for the new notifications.</li>
<li>Tests for the notifications.
<a href="https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/commits?author=StlMaris123">Here</a> is the summary of the work merged.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Unmerged Work</h3>
<p><strong>Precursor to active Jobs</strong></p>
<p>This checks the nodes which are liked, updated, commented upon and posted within the past given period of time time.</p>
<h3>Future work to be done</h3>
<p><strong>- Active Job Scheduling</strong></p>
<p>Active Job is a framework for declaring jobs and making them run on a variety of queuing backends. This has been broken down and more elaborated <a href="https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/1584">here</a></p>
https://publiclab.org/notes/show/14790Email Notification OverhaulstellaMon, 03 Apr 2017 06:26:03 +0000https://i.publiclab.org/notes/stella/04-03-2017/email-notification-overhaul
<h2>Personal Information</h2>
<p><strong>Name:</strong> StellaMaris Njage
<strong>Email:</strong> <a href="mailto:stellamarisnjage@gmail.com">stellamarisnjage@gmail.com</a>
<strong>Github:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/StlMaris123">https://github.com/StlMaris123</a>
<strong>Gitter:</strong> StellaMaris
<strong>Location:</strong> Nairobi, Kenya</p>
<h2>Affiliation</h2>
<p>Bsc. Mathematics and Computer Science - Maseno University, Kenya</p>
<h2>Project description</h2>
<p>I would love to work on email notification overhaul. The project was opened in 2014 and nobody has ever since taken up the issue. Some of the features that I would love to work on include:
- Reply by email to comments.
- Notification preferences for users.
- Improve tag subscriptions when tags are added late.</p>
<h2>Problem</h2>
<p>Main problem is that the application does not have a means of communication for users. They have to communicate through Google groups.</p>
<h2>Timeline/milestones</h2>
<ul>
<li>I will use the Test Driven Development approach.</li>
<li>MiniTest testing framework.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Week 0(4 - 7 May): Community Bonding</strong>
- Familiarize myself in greater depth about the source code of the project.
- Create a good working relationship with the mentor.</p>
<p><strong>Week 1 (15 - 21 May): Tests for comments via email</strong>.
- Write test on how the feature is expected to function.</p>
<p><strong>Week 2(22-28 May): Reply to comments via email</strong>
- Work on the feature using gem Mailman.</p>
<p><strong>Week 3(29 May - 4 June) Notification Preferences Tests</strong></p>
<p><strong>Week 4(12 - 18 June) Notification Preferences</strong>
- Work on Comments as a preference for notification.</p>
<p><strong>Week 5( 12 - 18 June). Subscriptions</strong>
- Work on subscriptions as a preference for notification.</p>
<p><strong>Week 6 (19 - 25 June) Likes</strong>
- Work on likes as a preference for notification.</p>
<p><strong>Week 7(26 June - 2 July) Evaluation.</strong>
- Review features that might need adjustments.</p>
<p><strong>Week 8 (3 - 9 July)Tests for auto subscription</strong></p>
<p><strong>Week 9( 10 - 16 July) Sign Up offers to auto-subscribe you to tags you are looking at</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Add extra field in the login form might indicate some tags which a user could add to or delete, like such as topics that interest him/her.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Week 10(17-23 July)Tests</strong>
- Write tests for delay in sending emails.</p>
<p><strong>Week 11( 24 - 30 July) Delay in sending emails</strong>
- Improve tag subscriptions when tags are added late to reduce delay in sending emails.</p>
<p><strong>Week 12 (31July - 6 August):) Evaluation.</strong>
- Review features that might need adjustments.</p>
<p><strong>Week 13: Code Refactoring</strong>
- Clean up code</p>
<p><strong>Week 14(14 - 20 August) Report Writing</strong>
<strong>Week 15(21 - 29 August) Final Evaluation and Submissions</strong></p>
<h2>Needs</h2>
<p>I need the following resources:
- Guidance of a mentor.
- Internet connection.
- Documentation</p>
<h2>Setup</h2>
<p>I have already forked and set up all the resources needed to get me going on my local machine.
The link to the repository is: <a href="https://github.com/mridulnagpal/plots2">https://github.com/mridulnagpal/plots2</a></p>
<h2>Experience</h2>
<p>How I have learned about writing software;
I was first exposed to writing code in a three-month boot camp between May- August 2016.
I have been improving my skills through writing projects, contribution to open source software, teaching my fellow coursemates, going through code tutorials and documentation and also participating in quizzes such as Code Wars.</p>
<p><strong>Languages:</strong>
-Ruby -Ruby on Rails JavaScript -HTML5 -CSS3</p>
<p><strong>Other projects I have contributed:</strong>
<a href="https://github.com/AgileVentures/MetPlus_PETS/commits?author=StlMaris123">https://github.com/AgileVentures/MetPlus_PETS/commits?author=StlMaris123</a>
<a href="https://github.com/AgileVentures/LocalSupport/pull/431#issuecomment-289516488">https://github.com/AgileVentures/LocalSupport/pull/431#issuecomment-289516488</a>
<a href="https://github.com/code9ty/website/commits?author=StlMaris123">https://github.com/code9ty/website/commits?author=StlMaris123</a></p>
<p><strong>Contributions to Public Lab:</strong>
I have already familiarized myself with the welcome page and so far these are the contributions I have made:
<a href="https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/commits?author=StlMaris123">https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/commits?author=StlMaris123</a>
<a href="https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/pull/1357#issuecomment-289909995">https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/pull/1357#issuecomment-289909995</a></p>
<h2>Teamwork</h2>
<p>I have worked with Agile Ventures team, Lake Hub team and my course mates during group project. Working in teams(especially Agile Ventures) has boosted myself confidence a great deal, I am comfortable asking questions and interacting with other team members. Working with deadlines has also helped me to be more organized and more sufficient.</p>
<h2>Passion</h2>
<p>Public Lab is a great project that provides a platform on which I can enhance my skills. Looking forward to being steps closer to a senior developer by the end of the internship. The community at public is very supportive and friendly and I would like to continue working with them.</p>
<h2>Audience</h2>
<p>This project will have a great impact on the end users. They will have the power of choosing the platform on which they would wish to be notified such as comments, subscriptions or likes. They also don’t have to visit the website in order to reply to their comments as they can do this over the email. This will making it more welcoming and friendly to the users.</p>
<h2>Commitment</h2>
<p>I do understand this is a serious commitment, equivalent to a full-time summer job. I do pledge my full time commitment to the above project till the end .</p>
https://publiclab.org/notes/show/14084